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Published: October 17th 2005
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The Modi Khola river gorge
Where we walked for more than 3 days Early on Saturday morning we got up, picked up our hired porter, had our last breakfast in the city, and took a taxi to the village named Naya Pul. After a beautiful ride of about an hour the car stopped, and I couldn't really get it that from now we were going to rely on our feet only for an unknown period of 8-10 days. Our porter, Puran, was a good one, speaking ok English. We later discovered that he was a licensed guide, the president of the guides union in Pokhara, and even arranged group tours sometimes, and we were very lucky to have him for the price of a porter.
The beginning of the walk was easy, 2 hours on a flat wide track, and then the stairs started. They were endless. After maybe 15 minutes I was so tired and I seriously asked myself what the hell I was doing there, whether I was at all fit for this trek and other questions of that sort. After a couple of hours walking up the stairs I stopped doubting - I was convinced that I went mad. But I wasn't going to give up, of course.
In that first
day we climbed about 1000 meters and ended the day in a nice guest house in Ghandrung (alt. 2000m), our last en-suite room, and a beautiful sunset over the mountains (Annapurna South and Machapuchre) that started to reveal themselves behind the clouds.
Problems didn't come in short that day. First we didn't find our iodine tablets. Then Shai forgot his hat and sunglasses about 1000 stairs down the road and ran back to get them. And last, the soles of his shoes started to fall apart and we wondered how we would finish the trek. At least the iodine was found in the end of the day.
In the second day we added only about 200m to our altitude, but in fact we walked down and up and down and up, on steep paths and more endless staircases. Already in the first day we met Kate, an English girl walking on her own with a tiny bag. In the beginning of the second day we met her again and she walked with us ever since. Puran liked her and totally adapted her to our small expedition. So back to our route, in that second day we walked in paths connecting
villages, trying not to step in "cakes", crossed big streams, and sometimes got a glimpse of the great mountains ahead of us. We stayed for the night in Chomrong, the last real village in the way (alt. 2180m), with an Israeli organized group. Groups are always loud and noisy, regardless of their nationality, but at least one of the guys had glue that gave us some hope regarding Shai's shoes.
We started the third day with our last big descent on the way up, crossed another river and started to climb along the Modi Khola river, that will take us all the way up. Bye bye villages, cows, donkeys, shit on the path and even stairs (well, mostly). From here the path looked more like a normal hiking trail, as it was purposely built to go to the base camp. The stream in the river below was amazingly strong, it could be a very fast track back down... Every now and then the peak of the Machapuchre appeared, revealing the shape that gave it its name: "fish tail".
It was our longest day. We passed several "guest houses villages" with 2-4 lodges and restaurants, and each time decided to carry
Shai and Kate on the way
Our big descent on the second day on. The last section of the day was probably the hardest one for me in the entire trek. Kate later called it "the valley of the doomed". Based on things we heard on the way, we expected to finish it in 1.5 hours but it took me and her more than 2, going up and down and up up up. It started raining as we got closer to our destination, and 5 minutes after we reached there it started pouring rain, we could have been totally soaked, we were so lucky!
The place we stayed that night was called Himalayan hotel. Sounds fancy, doesn't it? Well that was the night I learned to wash myself with a hot water bucket... it wasn't as bad as I thought, I must say. At an altitude of 2870m the night was cold. They heat the dining room (50 rupees per person...), and we had plenty of hot soup (including garlic soup that they recommend for the high altitudes). In the room you try to go as quickly as you can into the cozy sleeping bag, otherwise you freeze. I spent half of that night thinking of the next day, up to Annapurna Base
Camp!
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